Apple's iPhone 3G is exciting more than just tech-savvy consumers wanting to play with the latest gadget. Worldwide, mobile service providers are fighting tooth and nail for the right to sell the new iPhone because of its ability to attract new customers and sell them on data service plans, which providers have previously found to be a difficult sell.

Tough times for a rough market

According to Strategy Analytics, 1.12 billion mobile phones were sold last year, and 1.24 billion are expected to be sold this year. Forecasted growth of phones in general has slowed slightly due to difficult economic conditions worldwide. Intense competition between phone makers has also taken its toll on the weakest handset manufacturers.

Nokia has held onto the lead with its 38.8% share of the world's phonesets in 2007, while Samsung came in at second place with a 14.3% share. A lack of compelling new phones models from third place Motorola caused the company to slip dramatically down to a 14.1% share; it was hit particularly hard in the fourth quarter. Fourth place Sony Ericsson has also slipped downward to 9.2%. LG rounded out fifth place with a 7.2% share.

Apple's share of all phones sold worldwide last year was just 0.6%, but that represents more than half of what Steve Jobs originally outlined as Apple's goal for the end of 2008: a 1% share of the entire market. Apple's share of all phones sold is a misleading metric however, because the demand for more sophisticated phone units is rapidly outpacing the growth of mobile phones in general

Eyes on where the puck will be

While Strategy Analytics has pegged the overall phone market cooling from 12% growth in 2007 to just 10% expansion in 2008, smartphone sales are expected to continue their rapid ascent, with Gartner forecasting growth of 42% this year.

Incidentally, those growth numbers parallel the difference in growth between Apple's white hot Mac sales and the tepid PC market in general. Just as Apple has left the high volume but low profit commodity PC market for Dell and HP to fight over, it has similarly targeted the smartphone market exclusively, leaving mass market, lower profit "feature phone" sales to Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and LG.

In the US market, the iPhone rapidly carved out a 27% share of smartphone sales within its first few months. Worldwide, Apple's launch of the iPhone 3G has promised to further muscle into the high growth smartphone market, with providers fighting over regional rights to sell the new phone.

Fighting for exclusive rights

Last year, AT&T signed a deal with Apple for exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in the US market through 2009. On Thursday, USATODAY reported that the company extended its contract with Apple for an additional year through 2010, an endorsement of the iPhone's impact on AT&T's growth and profits.

Similar exclusive deals were signed in Europe. For example, Telefónica's O2 is believed to hold an exclusive contract on iPhone sales in the UK through 2012, according to a report by The Guardian.

These exclusive deals are actually being sought out by the telecoms themselves; Apple is understood to have an escape clause written into its contracts which will allow it to terminate the deals if "it does not think the phone is being marketed successfully," according to the Guardian.

The reason that mobile providers are fighting for exclusive access to the iPhone (or trying to buck against exclusive access by rivals) is that the iPhone is a hot seller that has the power to pull subscribers from other companies. Now that most users already have a phone, the goal has shifted toward nabbing customers from rivals rather than trying to recruit entirely new users.

The race toward smartphones

Further, the holy grail of the mobile industry is to sell data service on top of basic voice access, since this results in double the revenue for the same number of subscribers. Mobile providers have had a hard time marketing their data services, but the simplicity of the iPhone's network-savvy Maps, Mail and the mobile Safari web browser sells data plans hand over fist.

Simpler feature phones from Nokia, Samsung and others, which make up the majority of thier sales, don't sell these profitable data plans so mobile providers are subsequently less excited about selling them to consumers. Since most phones are sold by the mobile providers, this has a huge impact on where phone sales are headed.

Stealing rival provider's feature phone subscribers and upgrading them to an iPhone with a data plan is the ultimate win, as it erodes the competition while substantially boosting profits. In order to make this happen, providers are willing to heavily subsidize the iPhone 3G, paying Apple upfront in order drop the hardware entry price for consumers. That in turn erases the remaining allure of cheaper feature phones, pushing consumers toward smartphones even more rapidly.

Orange, owned by France Télécom, signed exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in France last fall. It has since muscled into other markets including Switzerland, where it now sells the iPhone 3G in competition with Swisscom, which was originally assumed to be region's exclusive iPhone provider. Apple has partnered with more than one mobile provider to sell the iPhone 3G in a number of new markets, including Australia, Austria, Czech Republic, Egypt, India, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, and ten markets in South and Central America, according to a list maintained by iLounge.

Orange is now rumored to be trying to fight its way into the UK market to compete against O2, hoping that it can break its rival's exclusive lock on that market by the end of 2009. For its part, O2 staged a promotional discount on the original iPhone prior to the launch of the iPhone 3G, a trick it has since credited with being able to grab over 137,000 subscribers from rival providers, according to a report by Jonny Evans in Macworld UK.

Until it can force its way into the UK market to sell the iPhone 3G, Orange has begun including a free iPod touch in its contracts for the phones it already sells in the UK through Carphone Warehouse. That deal is also being pushed by rival mobile providers in other markets; in Switzerland, Sunrise similarly bundles a free iPod touch with some of its phone contracts in a bid to compete against the two official vendors of the iPhone 3G.

Apple's partnerships mean automatic sales

All of this is great news for Apple. A decade ago, the company struggled to sell its technology in partner's retail stores such as Sears, BestBuy, and smaller independent computer stores. The problem was that those retailers could make more money selling cheaper and higher profit PCs; they actively funneled interested Mac buyers toward their own store branded computers running Microsoft Windows.

Apple is now selling its computers itself through its own retail stores, using sophisticated marketing to inform users of the differences between its products and commodity PCs. With the iPhone, that sale is even easier, since mobile providers are happily motivated by higher profits to push the iPhone 3G themselves. Additionally, with rivals of Apple's official iPhone partners marketing the iPod touch, Apple is selling its WiFi mobile platform from every outlet, broadening the value of the iPhone itself as that software platform establishes itself.

In many ways, Apple is creating a broad, automated sales channel similar to that created by Microsoft in the 90s, where PC hardware makers effectively sold Windows on the company's behalf to enable them to rival Apple's Macintosh. This time around, it isn't hardware makers selling Microsoft's software, but rather mobile service companies selling Apple's hardware and software.

That's terrible news for struggling handset makers such as Motorola and Sony Ericsson, and a direct challenge to most profitable markets of the high volume handset leaders including Nokia, Samsung, and LG, which haven't been able to tap the heady interest in iPhone despite a series of flaccid attempts to steal the thunder of their new American rival with iPhone-lookalike products. All Apple has to do is maintain its lead in software, a task that will become increasingly easier as it builds a worldwide ecosystem around the iPhone.

Later this month on August 22, Apple will expand its iPhone 3G launch to 20 additional countries, and 30 more countries are planned to be added by the end of the year.

Daniel Dilger from roughlydrafted.com, how many aliases do you have here on apple insider? Prince Mclean, Aidan Malley, how many others? Why don't you just use your real name and not try to fool the readers in getting a varied viewpoint on issues? Your writing style is unmistakable...

Daniel Dilger from roughlydrafted.com, how many aliases do you have here on apple insider? Prince Mclean, Aidan Malley, how many others? Why don't you just use your real name and not try to fool the readers in getting a varied viewpoint on issues? Your writing style is unmistakable...

I know. I feel it is sort of amateurish. Always trying to write the big-shot "journalist" mega-article when in reality it is just a regurgitation of old Apple-related information found somewhere else, with nothing new to show: just cheesy phrases and no meat, no new stuff. Oh well.

I guess some may find his stuff enlightening and superb or whatever. Not me though.

Daniel Dilger from roughlydrafted.com, how many aliases do you have here on apple insider? Prince Mclean, Aidan Malley, how many others? Why don't you just use your real name and not try to fool the readers in getting a varied viewpoint on issues? Your writing style is unmistakable...

Hi Daniel,

Love your work. Ignore the nasty guy above. Although your style is similar, it's clear that you're on your best 'no snarky' behavior over here, hence 'Prince McLean'! (Some people don't have a sense of humor.)

Anyhoo, you're in the Geeky Apple Hall of Fame as far as I'm concerned.

Keep on writing your ass off! I hope you've invested in Apple, because I feel 1000s of your readers are making very serious money having understood Apple's technical excellence, strengths, and dominance through your reports.

Love your work. Ignore the nasty guy above. Although your style is similar, it's clear that you're on your best 'no snarky' behavior over here, hence 'Prince McLean'! (Some people don't have a sense of humor.)

Anyhoo, you're in the Geeky Apple Hall of Fame as far as I'm concerned.

Keep on writing your ass off! I hope you've invested in Apple, because I feel 1000s of your readers are making very serious money having understood Apple's technical excellence, strengths, and dominance through your reports.

The problem with Malaysia is, Malaysian usually change their provider depending on how economic is their plan. It will be interesting which provider will get exclusive rights. I hope its Maxis .

Hi wheelhot, can you believe of the 70 countries, Malaysia is not even on that bloody list.

Singapore will be first with the iPhone 3G in South East Asia alongside the Philippines. As Singapore is the prime Apple, Inc. office in charge of India and South East Asia, that means Singapore will get it first before the Philippines, in all likelyhood.

So whether it is Maxis, Digi or Celcom, we'll see. Hopefully Maxis will do it because it is best suited with their clients and Blackberry. Digi is definitely out IMO because they have no feasible 3G offering right now.

Warning: x-SIM, y-SIM etc kind of solutions for unlocking iPhone 3G, let me know if there is any testing done on it. Probably there will be huge number of iPhone 3Gs flooding South East Asia market now from Hong Kong (because it is unlocked) and also from Singapore (it will probably be locked).

In playing with my iPhone 3G White 16GB, at first I was kinda annoyed about it being locked so I just fooled around with the Wifi.

Then I got a bit of fun with some SIM hacks for a few hours while it worked.

And you know what? Sure, I need mobile and SMS.

But DATA is the key. I agree. GPS and DATA. GPS is very, very powerful.

The iPhone 3G applications and platform has enormous potential.

Again, DATA is the key.

Two main service provider industries will thrive: reliable, standard-subscription based WiFI that covers the city. Like Cloud in the UK.

Next, the telco itself, I agree, because they sell you data plans.

Fighting over text and call minutes is yesterday's news and is an absolute slugfest.

But like most of us, give us a frickin' unlocked iPhone 3G, give us a bloody reasonable 3G prepaid plan on top of contract options, and for the icing on the cake good WiFi coverage, and Boom! That's successful iPhone 3G and Apple, Inc. operations and happy telcos in a geographic area.

Throw in good access to Mac resellers and support, and there you have it. The three legs hopping successfully.

Only one problem: supply constraints means that the serviceable market is contained by supply of products since these products are highly difficult and uneconomical to be closely copied or imitated.

I wonder when will Malaysia get iPhone?
The problem with Malaysia is, Malaysian usually change their provider depending on how economic is their plan. It will be interesting which provider will get exclusive rights. I hope its Maxis .

Bro tell me now in KL how much they try to sell iPhone 3G? Locked version how much? Unlock version (probably from Hong Kong) how much? From Low Yat or other place as well?

1. Telcos lock down Apple iPhone 3G.
2. By September full Dev Team iPhone 3G unlock is most likely.

NOW.

WHO ARE THE BEST MVNOs (sorry head is flooding right now with ideas) that provide good 3G Data Service ????????
Who are the best telcos that provide good pay-as-you-go (credit checks are too inconvenient for a lot of people) 3G Data Service ???????
Who combines these with good city-wide, nation-wide, region-wide (Euro etc) alliances of WiFi provision and simple, fast, reliable WiFi?

This is the key on the telco-data side of the iPhone 3G.
The other side is the grey-market/ unlocking industry.
The next side is the hardware selling itself, which on a value-driven perspective is not really there unless you as a reseller have value-"added" or value-"creating" services.
The fourth side is the App Store. Which has very high value-creation aspects but the coding and good developer resources are increasing but limited. Unless you can start to outsource iPhone 2.0 development to India or something like that. (Ding! another idea)
Following the above it is outsourcing iPhone 2.0 development.

This article is so dense with great information. It reads like a business school case study summary. It might be the first time I've read all the way through one of the larger AI articles in a few years. Truly nice work, whoever you are.

Yeah, this is all very fine-sounding, but at the end of the day, Apple has buckled under pressure from this luddite industry, and has basically succumbed to their shoddy, consumer-unfriendly business practices.

It's almost as badly put together as Paul Thurrott's finest works although more gushingly sickly. At least Thurrott is bitter and twisted.

I mean...

"a direct challenge to most profitable markets of the high volume handset leaders including Nokia, Samsung, and LG, which haven't been able to tap the heady interest in iPhone despite a series of flaccid attempts to steal the thunder of their new American rival with iPhone-lookalike products."

So Daniel is honestly trying to convince us that Nokia with 38% of the phone market hasn't sold more N95s than the iPhone or that the phone's they've released since the iPhone have been flaccid attempts to steal it's thunder. Come again??? Samsung/LG perhaps but Nokia seem to have continued on like they always do.

Kasper, guys, do some editing on Daniel's posts before your regugitate it here, please. Or set him a word limit. Otherwise I'll just increasingly skip them. It's embaressing. The whole iPhone series he's doing now is a big repetitive snore absent of almost any information. Just because someone can type reams, doesn't mean they should.

In order to make this happen, providers are willing to heavily subsidize the iPhone 3G, paying Apple upfront in order drop the hardware entry price for consumers. That in turn erases the remaining allure of cheaper feature phones, pushing consumers toward smartphones even more rapidly.

I don't think so. I don't believe the writer put much thought into this last line.

The remaining allure to simpler, cheaper phones is that the basic service isn't isn't nearly as expensive on ordinary phones as it is with smart phones. I expect that my monthly bill will be doubled once it's all settled. I have considered returning my iPhone as I really didn't use or need the internet stuff as much as I thought I would, among other things. The biggest reason I haven't done it is that my previous carrier doesn't have a way for me to go back to them without still paying the cancellation fee.

Yeah, this is all very fine-sounding, but at the end of the day, Apple has buckled under pressure from this luddite industry, and has basically succumbed to their shoddy, consumer-unfriendly business practices.

I am not impressed.

How has Apple buckled? What consumer-unfriendly business practices? They are selling millions of phones and ATT/other selected telecos are selling tons of minutes and data. Millions of people love their iPhones. What is consumer-unfriendly? The 45 people on the internet that are pissed that they would need to switch to ATT if they want to get the iPhone? Boo-hoo!

And BTW, what a coup for Apple to have these competitors telecos giving away iPod Touches with phone subscriptions. Genius!

"Some of us are decent people who want to stay out of the emergency room, but stillblast through neo-gridlock traffic in residential districts whenever we feel like it....For that we need fine...

How has Apple buckled? What consumer-unfriendly business practices? They are selling millions of phones and ATT/other selected telecos are selling tons of minutes and data. Millions of people love their iPhones. What is consumer-unfriendly? The 45 people on the internet that are pissed that they would need to switch to ATT if they want to get the iPhone? Boo-hoo!

He was talking about the cellular industry in general. Apple selling a pile of phones has no bearing on whether AT&T or the rest of the industry is customer friendly. The industry has the feeling of being a near oligopoly status.

While we're on the topic, please explain why the cost for an SMS message has gone up from $0.10 from three years ago to $0.20 now. Please explain how it is customer friendly to not offer any mechanism to block SMS messages or disable the feature. If I get spammed, I pay the carrier $0.20 whether or not I wanted the message, and the carrier has a disincentive to stop it or offer a blocking mechanism.

He was talking about the cellular industry in general. Apple selling a pile of phones has no bearing on whether AT&T or the rest of the industry is customer friendly. The industry has the feeling of being a near oligopoly status.

While we're on the topic, please explain why the cost for an SMS message has gone up from $0.10 from three years ago to $0.20 now. Please explain how it is customer friendly to not offer any mechanism to block SMS messages or disable the feature. If I get spammed, I pay the carrier $0.20 whether or not I wanted the message, and the carrier has a disincentive to stop it or offer a blocking mechanism.

There are more examples, that is the one that comes to mind the most.

They wrote that "Apple has buckled". I was just trying to illustrate that Apple has done no such thing. Apple is pretty much doing what it wants to do as it relates to iPhone sales. Millions sold, 35-40% gross profit and a seemingly thriving app. store that will proliferate the entire model/ecosystem. It seems to be working beautifully for Apple. It seems to me that it is ATT that has buckled or at least bowed for the time being.

For items like the iPhone, cell service, texts...I say let the market bear it out. If people are willing to pay $.20 for texts then ATT made the correct decision to raise prices. If the text usage dramatically drops off after the price increase then it was probably a bad business decision and should be reevaluated. I can't speak to your issue of receiving unwanted(spam) texts. I have never had that problem. I would imagine since your teleco can see what your texts say that you could tell them to refund the charges as they were unsolicited. I think you would need to deal with that on an individual basis.

I do think we need more oversight and regulation here in the United States but cell phone service is not where I would begin. 15 years ago cell phones were not a "must have" item. And you could always get a pay as you go phone or something of the kind. That would control costs for you.

People just keep complaining about companies like ATT and how their service is so terrible and how their fees are so inflated. How many people don't have healthcare? If folks put half the energy into real problems as they did about bitching whether or not Apple/ATT are overcharging we would probably have something like universal coverage at this point. You poor baby you got charged for some texts. While plenty of kids are sick with no opportunity to see a doctor. Wake up!

"Some of us are decent people who want to stay out of the emergency room, but stillblast through neo-gridlock traffic in residential districts whenever we feel like it....For that we need fine...

He was talking about the cellular industry in general. Apple selling a pile of phones has no bearing on whether AT&T or the rest of the industry is customer friendly. The industry has the feeling of being a near oligopoly status.

While we're on the topic, please explain why the cost for an SMS message has gone up from $0.10 from three years ago to $0.20 now. Please explain how it is customer friendly to not offer any mechanism to block SMS messages or disable the feature. If I get spammed, I pay the carrier $0.20 whether or not I wanted the message, and the carrier has a disincentive to stop it or offer a blocking mechanism.

It's almost as badly put together as Paul Thurrott's finest works although more gushingly sickly. At least Thurrott is bitter and twisted.

Kasper, guys, do some editing on Daniel's posts before your regugitate it here, please. Or set him a word limit. Otherwise I'll just increasingly skip them. It's embaressing. The whole iPhone series he's doing now is a big repetitive snore absent of almost any information. Just because someone can type reams, doesn't mean they should.

For such "badly researched regurgitated drivel", you certainly expend a lot of time and effort complaining about it. If you don't like his articles, THEN STOP READING THEM. Legitimate feedback and debate is one thing, but posting insolent rants every time a new piece is published is a waste of everyone's time. Although some of the articles from D.E.D. certainly come off as a bit Apple biased, I guarantee I am not alone here in stating that they generally provide a lot of great information and analysis for AI and roughlydrafted readers. In the spirit of the English readers, BUGGER OFF!

Quote:

Originally Posted by .:R2theT

For items like the iPhone, cell service, texts...I say let the market bear it out. If people are willing to pay $.20 for texts then ATT made the correct decision to raise prices. If the text usage dramatically drops off after the price increase then it was probably a bad business decision and should be reevaluated. I can't speak to your issue of receiving unwanted(spam) texts. I have never had that problem. I would imagine since your teleco can see what your texts say that you could tell them to refund the charges as they were unsolicited. I think you would need to deal with that on an individual basis

That is indeed the very problem, even more so with wired telecommunications. There is no legitimate "market force". Between the FCC and the republicans in congress (and many democrats), it is one big RACKET. They spend millions on lobbyists and they get results. These same crooked politicians that rail against any form of "goverment intrusion" are the same idiots that are so fast to pass new legislation that ROADBLOCKS COMPETITION and props up existing incumbent monopolies. Why do you think the cable and phone companies don't have to offer competitors access to the "last-mile" lines into consumer's homes that were partially subsidized by taxpayers? Because legislators and the FCC KILLED Local-loop unbundling!

example: In the three states I've lived, every single home I lived in had access to a maximum of ONE cable provider and ONE DSL provider. And in many places, DSL is NOT available as you have to generally be within a few miles of the telephone company's equipment. So you end up with ONE cable internet provider that charges you out the **** for crappy capped service. Satellite service is barely better than dialup because of slow speed, high latency and caps. Some areas have expensive, relatively slow, fixed wireless, but that is pretty rare. The only folks that see *ANY* DECENT COMPETITION are those in the areas where Verzon has laid new fiber-optic cable and offer their FIOS service. But only a tiny percentage of American citizens have access to this. On a smaller scale, there are municipal and regional level fiber-topic (fiber-to-the-home aka FTTH) providers, particularly in the west. Utah is a good example, I believe there are 3 or 4 regional providers of super-fast FTTH consumer broadband. There is even a little tiny town in Oregon where the all the homes have access to a 1000 Megabit/sec line. Yes, 1Gbps fiber lines!

On the other hand, if you are say, in the UK or many other European countries (even in apartment buildings), you can have 4-6 DIFFERENT BROADBAND PROVIDERS beating a path to your door!

Getting back to wireless, the 700mhz auction was a decent attempt at opening up a new broadband pipe, but they SHOULD have mandated that at least some part of the spectrum had to be purchased by a NEW player, and not an incumbent. Our northern neighbors are doing exactly that to help with their telecom monopoly. This is also precisely what should be done with the failed auction of the first-responder public safety "D" block in the American 700mhz auction. They should auction it off to new firms so we get another major nationwide wireless player in the market.

I don't have any more time to write, but it only takes a few minutes of research to dig up all the skeletons in America's telecommunications policy and to see just how bad the state of competition really is.
Not to even begin to talk about the billions of TAXPAYER dollars that went into subsidies and tax breaks for telecommunications companies to build out fiber optic infrastructure that they NEVER DID. After a decade or two of company mergers, buyouts, and bankruptcies and changing politicians, NO ONE was held accountable and the American people were basically defrauded out of tens of billions of dollars!

It's almost as badly put together as Paul Thurrott's finest works although more gushingly sickly. At least Thurrott is bitter and twisted.

I mean...

"a direct challenge to most profitable markets of the high volume handset leaders including Nokia, Samsung, and LG, which haven't been able to tap the heady interest in iPhone despite a series of flaccid attempts to steal the thunder of their new American rival with iPhone-lookalike products."

So Daniel is honestly trying to convince us that Nokia with 38% of the phone market hasn't sold more N95s than the iPhone or that the phone's they've released since the iPhone have been flaccid attempts to steal it's thunder. Come again??? Samsung/LG perhaps but Nokia seem to have continued on like they always do.

Kasper, guys, do some editing on Daniel's posts before your regugitate it here, please. Or set him a word limit. Otherwise I'll just increasingly skip them. It's embaressing. The whole iPhone series he's doing now is a big repetitive snore absent of almost any information. Just because someone can type reams, doesn't mean they should.

Nice one and so true. He did get put in his place by iLounge a few months back.

They wrote that "Apple has buckled". I was just trying to illustrate that Apple has done no such thing. Apple is pretty much doing what it wants to do as it relates to iPhone sales. Millions sold, 35-40% gross profit and a seemingly thriving app. store that will proliferate the entire model/ecosystem. It seems to be working beautifully for Apple. It seems to me that it is ATT that has buckled or at least bowed for the time being.

For items like the iPhone, cell service, texts...I say let the market bear it out. If people are willing to pay $.20 for texts then ATT made the correct decision to raise prices. If the text usage dramatically drops off after the price increase then it was probably a bad business decision and should be reevaluated. I can't speak to your issue of receiving unwanted(spam) texts. I have never had that problem. I would imagine since your teleco can see what your texts say that you could tell them to refund the charges as they were unsolicited. I think you would need to deal with that on an individual basis.

I do think we need more oversight and regulation here in the United States but cell phone service is not where I would begin. 15 years ago cell phones were not a "must have" item. And you could always get a pay as you go phone or something of the kind. That would control costs for you.

People just keep complaining about companies like ATT and how their service is so terrible and how their fees are so inflated. How many people don't have healthcare? If folks put half the energy into real problems as they did about bitching whether or not Apple/ATT are overcharging we would probably have something like universal coverage at this point. You poor baby you got charged for some texts. While plenty of kids are sick with no opportunity to see a doctor. Wake up!

Great post. Right on the mark. AT&T is charging rip off prices because people will allow them selves to be ripped off. You want them to stop ripping you off. Don't buy their service. Look how Rogers backed down when people got pissed.

As an aside. SMS's should normally be free as they are sent in the D-Channel. They are sent out of band when the phone is in an idle state. It is free money.

For such "badly researched regurgitated drivel", you certainly expend a lot of time and effort complaining about it. If you don't like his articles, THEN STOP READING THEM. Legitimate feedback and debate is one thing, but posting insolent rants every time a new piece is published is a waste of everyone's time. Although some of the articles from D.E.D. certainly come off as a bit Apple biased, I guarantee I am not alone here in stating that they generally provide a lot of great information and analysis for AI and roughlydrafted readers. In the spirit of the English readers, BUGGER OFF!

Amen! Having read almost all of the historical articles on Roughly Drafted, I can say that this characterization is the direct opposite of the truth. Even calling them "Apple biased" is buying into the right-wing radio/Fox News definition of "bias," where anybody telling the truth makes your side sound bad, so they must be "biassed." Of course, you can always use the tactic of insulting the bearer of bad news all over the internet, hoping that you can create doubt in the minds of readers. I think we see that in the original posting.

People just keep complaining about companies like ATT and how their service is so terrible and how their fees are so inflated. How many people don't have healthcare? If folks put half the energy into real problems as they did about bitching whether or not Apple/ATT are overcharging we would probably have something like universal coverage at this point. You poor baby you got charged for some texts. While plenty of kids are sick with no opportunity to see a doctor. Wake up!

Amen! Having read almost all of the historical articles on Roughly Drafted, I can say that this characterization is the direct opposite of the truth. Even calling them "Apple biased" is buying into the right-wing radio/Fox News definition of "bias," where anybody telling the truth makes your side sound bad, so they must be "biassed." Of course, you can always use the tactic of insulting the bearer of bad news all over the internet, hoping that you can create doubt in the minds of readers. I think we see that in the original posting.

I'm not convinced of your your interpretation. All of the RD arguments I see are deftly respun such that Apple comes out on top, every time, quite conveniently, it seems. The way it looks to me is that it's almost as if Apple cannot possibly do no wrong, no good idea or workflow can possibly come from anyone else. The whole business just gives an air of cheerleading.

I am kind of curious to see what Apple does in 2010 but I guess that will depend on how much market share they have at the moment and/or whether they feel AT&T has lived up to its end of the bargain with its network towers

I would think maybe they know that opening it up to all carriers could really increase more market share potential

Huh? That's a pretty ignorant statement. Most countries in the world charge minutes for incoming calls.

Do they? Which ones? Certainly in Europe incoming calls and texts are always free, unless you're roaming abroad, in which case you do pay for the call to be redirected from your home country to the country you're in. (There are also things premium rate texts you can get but you have to specifically subscribe to them.)

I thought it was ONLY North America where you charge for incoming mobile calls, and the reason for that is that your cellphone numbers have a normal geographic area code, whereas in Europe mobile numbers have their own dialing codes (eg. in the UK mobile numbers start with 07 while geographic numbers start 01 or 02). This allows the networks to charge more for calling a mobile so it's the caller who bears the extra cost.

I'm not convinced of your your interpretation. All of the RD arguments I see are deftly respun such that Apple comes out on top, every time, quite conveniently, it seems. The way it looks to me is that it's almost as if Apple cannot possibly do no wrong, no good idea or workflow can possibly come from anyone else. The whole business just gives an air of cheerleading.

Careful JeffDM. You are speaking against Apple and its minions, not to mention, He Who Must Not Be Named.

For such "badly researched regurgitated drivel", you certainly expend a lot of time and effort complaining about it. If you don't like his articles, THEN STOP READING THEM. Legitimate feedback and debate is one thing, but posting insolent rants every time a new piece is published is a waste of everyone's time.

I really don't. AI should keep to what it does best though, publish rumours, not opinion pieces.

You and aegisdesign have very valid points. While I do not speak for him, I think he is just trying to say that AI will not be taken seriously as anything more than an Apple cheerleading site if they continue with their journalistic approach. As I posted earlier Daniel Pilger or whatever his name is today, got his head handed to him by iLounge for posting totally inaccurate articles as fact, and then trying to defend once iLounge pointed them out. As it stands AI is seen as little more than a gathering of Apple zealots who seem to think Steve Jobs is their best friend. While this is not completely true, this opinion does have its merits.

Of course. I co-own a magazine and was a technical editor. I'm fully aware what happens when readers decide to pass right through instead of stopping. Been there, lived on beans on toast for 3 months.

I like AI because there's more signal and less noise in the forums than say MacRumors. The rumours are often juicy too. They do that extremely well. I skip the financial analyst pieces generally and If I wanted analysis and opinion though, I'd go to Ars or Daring Fireball.

As I posted earlier Daniel Pilger or whatever his name is today, got his head handed to him by iLounge for posting totally inaccurate articles as fact, and then trying to defend once iLounge pointed them out.

I am kind of curious to see what Apple does in 2010 but I guess that will depend on how much market share they have at the moment and/or whether they feel AT&T has lived up to its end of the bargain with its network towers

I would think maybe they know that opening it up to all carriers could really increase more market share potential

I mean, overall it should be a good thing for Apple in terms of market share, branding, exposure, and so on.

However, it is odd that as much as I follow tech I really don't know about the mobile industry.

I draw my battle lines pretty hard and maybe that's where I go wrong.

With the mobile industry, all I know is that if I need a phone service then heck, it's just a call and sms service, it does what it does. I like Sony Ericsson phones since I stopped using Moto and Nokia several years ago.

You all probably are sick of me ranting and raving about Carphone Warehouse here in the UK and O2. Here's the big one: why are there hardly any white people working in a mobile phone shop in London ???? WTF? Seriously, it is quite bizzare. I mean, Apple Stores, Tesco, and so on are multicultural, but the mobile phone shops????

I mean, I'm not hijacking this thread to talk about racial issues, but it is odd that when you apply for an Apple Store Belfast position, you are requested to say whether you are Protestant or Catholic or neither...